


Messy Hearts

by predilection



Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers Ninja Steel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Gen, Happy Ending, Platonic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, ridiculous plot devices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 09:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12908658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/predilection/pseuds/predilection
Summary: Levi Weston isn't born Levi Weston. He also isn't born with a mark.He gets one, though, the day his younger brother is born.(A platonic soulmates AU.)





	Messy Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> Because I love Levi and platonic soulmates, and because this season deserves all the magical AUs.
> 
> Major spoilers up through episode 12 of Ninja Steel.
> 
> This story has a happy ending, but I still need to warn for canon levels of violence, a monster violating a character's mind while that character is restrained, discussions of grief and trauma, and references to off-screen pre-series (canon-ish) deaths.

Aiden isn't born with a mark. For the first two and a half years of his life, his skin is bare. 

That changes the day his younger brother is born. Brody enters the world with a mark on the side of his left shoulder: a black spot the size of a quarter that looks like a messy drawing of a heart. 

It takes less than a day for Aiden's parents to notice that a matching messy heart has appeared on Aiden's shoulder. His mom smiles when she spots it, and she tells him that his mark means he's going to be a good older brother. He and Brody have twin marks, after all. They're destined to be close.

*

Aiden and Brody are close. Even though they're two and a half years apart, they can always be found in each other's company. They train together and practice guitar together, and they also play with toy trucks and make forts out of all the blankets they can find together. 

That doesn't change, even after their mom dies. Aiden crawls into Brody's bed every night for months. It's easier for them to sleep this way and Aiden thinks of it as being a good older brother -- the kind of brother their mom wanted him to be.

Even at school, they're joined at the hip. They aren't in the same classes, but they travel to and from school together and make sure to find each other at recess. Everyone knows them as a duo: the two Romero brothers.

Aiden and Brody are inseparable. Right up until something rips them apart.

When Aiden is ten years old, he witnesses something horrific. His father is attacked and killed in front of him. That alone would be traumatic, but Aiden is tasked with hiding himself and protecting the ninja steel, so he's not able to protect Brody. He watches between wooden panels in the barn wall as Brody is taken away by the monsters that killed their father, and he's powerless as Brody shouts Aiden's name and begs for his help.

*

Aiden's life completely changes after that. 

He's always understood duty, especially duty to the greater good, so he leaves everything he knows behind and runs from the monsters he fears are looking for him. He stows away on trains and sleeps out in the woods, putting the survival skills he was taught to good use.

When he's put a good distance between himself and Summer Cove, he lets himself get picked up by police officers and they take him to an agency that specializes in helping kids who are in trouble. He gives the social worker assigned to him a fake name and a story of half-truths -- enough to hopefully be believable, but too little to identify him as who he really is. It takes time, but eventually he's given new identification, all of it under the new name he's chosen for himself: Levi Weston.

This period of his life is also the first time he's truly grateful for the mark on his shoulder. It's still as dark as it's always been, and the one thing giving him hope for the future is the knowledge that, somewhere out there, Brody is still alive.

*

Slowly, Aiden stops thinking of himself as Aiden, and starts thinking of himself as Levi.

He's placed in a foster home, and it's from there he begins to build his new life. He plans to become a scientist, hoping to study physics and astronomy so he can find his brother. 

When he's gifted a guitar, he starts practicing every second he can. Playing the guitar lets him feel connected to his family -- to his deceased parents and his lost brother -- and besides the mark on his arm, music is the only tangible piece of them he has. He loves playing the songs his father taught him and Brody, including the song their father wrote for them.

He still studies science, but he loves music. He begins writing his own songs, and a year later, he's being asked to play at local festivals and events.

He's offered a record contract when he's sixteen. At first, he worries about being in the spotlight, especially since he's spent so many years keeping a low profile, but he eventually decides the best place to hide is in plain sight. 

By the time he's nineteen, he's released two albums, made a lot of money, and gone on a nation-wide tour with a second tour in the works. He's busier than he's ever been, but he's also the happiest he's been since the day he lost everything.

He keeps his shoulders covered at all times so no one can see his mark. He doesn't want anyone asking questions about it, or assuming -- like the gossip magazines tend to do -- that it's a romantic kind of mark. But when he's by himself, he often touches his mark with his fingertips and hopes that wherever Brody is, that he's okay.

He hopes that, despite their different paths, they'll find each other again soon.

*

When Levi is twenty, a large crystalline ninja star appears before him when he's playing his guitar in a park.

It's the Nexus Prism. 

Levi's terrified and excited at the same time. Terrified because this prism heralded the beginning of the end of his family, and it's obviously here for him. But he's excited because maybe, just maybe, it can help him find Brody.

The last time he saw the Nexus Prism, there were six power stars inside it. Now, there's only one -- the gold one. Levi feels like it's calling to him and he reaches out for it. His hand goes through the glass-like surface of the prism easily and he pulls it out. 

It hums in his hand, and it makes him feel strangely calm -- like pulling out this star is what he was supposed to do.

That calm doesn't last long. Monsters materialize in front of him, and the next thing he knows, there's something blocking out his vision and the monsters are grabbing at his limbs. He puts up a fight and even manages to throw a few of them off, but then he's lifted into the air and everything goes dark.

*

When he comes to, he's strapped down onto a hard chair-like contraption with wires and other technology he doesn't remotely recognize plugged into it. He has no idea where he is. The room he's being held in is oddly shaped and it doesn't look like any place he's ever been. 

He spots the gold power star on a nearby pillar and reaches for it, but the restraints holding him down are strong and tight. It's as he's trying to find a way to free himself that a monster appears.

Levi has never met this monster personally, but she was there that day -- she was with the monsters that killed his father and took his brother. That alone would make him panic, but it's made worse by the rising tide of fear.

He doesn't understand how the monster found him. He's been so careful for so long. Was he, somehow, not careful enough?

"What do you want with me?" he asks, hoping she can't tell how afraid he is. 

"You're connected to a power star," the monster coos. "That makes you useful to me."

Levi hopes that means she wants him because of the gold power star, and that she has no idea who he really is. "Useful how?"

"Oh, you'll see," the monster says.

She rolls a large machine into his line of sight from somewhere behind him. It looks like a refrigerator someone decided to do evil experiments on -- it's covered in blinking lights and twisted wires, and also what disconcertingly look like scorch marks. 

The monster pulls something large and round off the top of the machine and the moment she lifts it above Levi's head, it dawns on him that it's a giant helmet. He struggles, pulling against his restraints until he can feel them biting into his skin, but ultimately, he's trapped.

The helmet is heavy and covers his eyes, trapping him in darkness. The machine makes a whirling noise, and then all he can hear is a low hum that's so loud it's painful.

He feels it then -- a slippery feeling of something in his mind. 

"No!" he shouts, still struggling to break free. His mind is his, and he's carrying too many secrets. "Let me go!"

If the monster replies, he doesn't hear it. The helmet is too loud, and he's too distracted by the terrifying violation taking place in his head.

Through his rising fear and panic, he forces himself to think about his music career and a song he's writing -- anything but his family.

But the device finds them anyway. He sees a flash of memory of himself and Brody dueling with practice swords in the backyard and then--

\--and then the memory vanishes.

"No!" he shouts as more memories of Brody abruptly appear before him only to disappear a second later. 

The memories of Brody start mixing with memories of his parents and memories of them as a family, and one by one, they all start to disappear too.

He screams, begging for this to stop. His memories are all he has left of his family. They're all he has left of who is really is. And here they are being violated and stolen by the same monsters he's dedicated his life to hiding from. 

He's crying now. He feels the tears run down his face and drip down from his chin to his neck. "Please stop!" he begs, but it doesn't stop. The machines digs deeper and deeper into his mind, destroying everything it touches and leaving pain and desolation in its wake.

*

Levi wakes up in darkness. He remembers finding a gold ninja star and being kidnapped by monsters. He also has a vague memory of having a helmet put over his head but when he tries to think of what happened...

...there's nothing there.

A loud explosion nearby pulls him from his thoughts. He hears more explosions and then he feels heat against his skin as the restraints holding him down are cut. He doesn't waste any time. The second he's free, he rips the helmet off his head and gets to his feet. 

He can see a strange spaceship-looking vehicle through a hole in the wall of... wherever he is. From the looks of things and from the way the air is rushing out of the room through the hole, he seems to be in a ship flying high in the Earth's atmosphere.

He grabs the gold ninja star from a nearby pillar and the second he touches it, his body is engulfed in a golden light. When he looks down at his hands a moment later, the star is gone and he's wearing some kind of armor. It's familiar somehow. Like he's seen someone wear similar armor before. He can't think of who it could've been though.

Something is telling him to jump out of the hole and onto to the spaceship-looking vehicle that's still hovering outside it. That seems like a bad idea at this altitude, but it's a better idea than sticking around in a prison cell so he jumps.

*

Levi figures out pretty quickly that he's a power ranger. Even though he's in the middle of his second nation-wide tour, he ends up fighting monsters a few times. He also learns that there are other active power rangers when they make the national news after saving the city of Summer Cove from a particularly heinous monster. 

He finally meets the other rangers when his tour takes him to Summer Cove. 

What should be a fun concert ends up turning into a nightmare when monsters attack, but thankfully, in the end, no one is hurt, and he ends up with five new friends.

Brody, Sarah, Preston, Hayley and Calvin are good fighters and even better people. He feels an instant kinship with all of them, but especially with Brody. They have ninja stars like he does and he learns his gold ninja star is one of six power stars. 

Afterwards, it's surprising how easy it is for him to put his tour on hold to live in a city he's only even been to once before on his last tour. It's also surprising how quickly he finds himself integrating into the lives of his new friends. 

Even though he's older than them all and a celebrity, he enrolls in a few extra senior classes at their high school. Since he was on tour at the time, he ended up graduating with a GED, so he takes this opportunity to enroll in the advanced math classes he didn't get a chance to take the first time around. He's always wanted to be good at math and the sciences because...

He's not sure, really. He supposes he just likes them.

*

A few weeks later, the topic of marks comes up.

Sarah and Preston don't have any marks, at least not yet, and Hayley and Calvin have matching ones on their sides. Brody has a mark too. He pulls up his t-shirt sleeve and shows them a black heart-like mark on his left shoulder. 

Brody explains that his mark connects him to his lost older brother, Aiden. His parents told him he was born with it and that Aiden got the same mark when Brody was born. He also tells them that he thinks it's shaped like a heart because it represents how much he loves his brother and how much his brother, wherever he is, still loves him.

When he's finished talking, Brody blinks his eyes rapidly to try to clear the wetness forming in them and turns his head away from them. Calvin steps in before Levi can, throwing an arm over Brody's shoulders and reassuring him that they'll find his brother one day.

"What about you?" Sarah asks Levi before the topic changes to something totally different. "Do you have any marks?"

Levi shakes his head as he admits, "I don't have any yet either." 

His skin is bare, like it's always been. But he doesn't mind. He's young. He's got his whole life ahead of him, which is plenty of time for marks to appear.

*

The day Aiden shows up, Brody is overjoyed. He introduces Aiden to all of them, and the two of them talk for hours about what Brody experienced.

Levi overhears a lot of it, and everything he hears horrifies him. He knew Brody was kidnapped by Galvanax and his monsters as a kid, but knowing the details makes it so much _worse_. Levi wouldn't wish what happened to Brody on anyone, and he hates that this is something Brody had to experience.

He's happy Brody has found his brother -- that he's been given a small piece of his family back. He watches the way Brody's face lights up when he shows Aiden around the school, and just by the way they interact, he knows that Aiden really does have Brody's matching mark even before the two of them pull up their sleeves to show them off.

*

Levi wants to like Aiden, and he tries really hard to befriend him, but Aiden rubs him the wrong way. He makes fun of other people under his breath and he thinks of himself as superior to everyone except for maybe Brody. He also keep pressuring Brody to show him their command center, even though they all decided it should be kept a secret from Aiden until they get to know him better. 

Aiden also, for reasons Levi doesn't understand, seems to hate him. Aiden ignores him when he asks questions, and when they walk past each other, Aiden always seems to find some reason to "accidentally" jab his elbows into Levi's side. Not only that, Levi catches Aiden glaring at him more than once.

It all comes to a head when they spar together, and Aiden fights dirty even though it's supposed to be a friendly match.

Levi calls him out on it. Aiden calls him a liar. And Brody... Brody defends his brother, determined to give him the benefit of the doubt even if the others all come forward as witnesses to Aiden's foul behavior.

*

The next monster Galvanax sends to Earth carries around an oversized copy of Sleeping Beauty and throws giant red apples at them. An alien monster so invested in human popular culture would be comical if it wasn't so dangerous.

They have their hands full fighting the monster and a whole squad of kudabots, when Aiden makes things more complicated by running onto the battlefield to help them. Despite protests that it's too dangerous for him to be there, he begins fighting a few of the kudabots on his own. 

The monster zeroes in on Aiden quickly and the first opportunity it gets, it fires an energy beam at him. Levi is on the other side of the battlefield when it happens, but he still sees it when Brody jumps between the monster's attack and his brother.

Then Brody is on the ground, unmoving and unmorphed.

Levi feels something well up inside of him -- something like rage and something oddly like anguish -- and the next thing he knows, he's plowing down every kudabot unfortunate enough to be between him and Brody.

Aiden is already on his knees at Brody's side by the time he gets there. Levi ignores him in favor of checking on Brody. Up close, it's clear that there's something glowing brightly through Brody's shirt -- symbols of some kind -- on his chest where Brody was hit by the energy beam.

Levi calls for Mick to transport them back to the command center. Aiden is transported too but Levi doesn't care if Aiden happens to see the inside of their base. He's no longer endangering himself on the battlefield, and even if Levi doesn't particularly like Aiden, he can't deny him being near Brody when Brody is hurt.

Levi helps Mick remove Brody's shirt. Without fabric in the way, the glowing outline of the symbols on Brody's skin are even more worrying. They're made up of a grouping of concentric circles with what look like small stylized bolts of lightning drawn overtop.

Aiden hovers near Brody as Mick and Redbot start running tests, but Aiden doesn't seem as worried as Levi would expect him to be. Instead, he keeps looking around their base like what matters to him is his curiosity about the secrets of the power rangers and not his hurt brother. It irks Levi, but he doesn't say anything, figuring now is a bad time to snap at him.

*

When the monster is gigantified, Levi returns to the fight and calls on his zords. It takes a long time and two different strategies, but together, he and the others are able to defeat the monster.

Levi hopes that whatever the monster did to Brody will be reversed the second the monster is destroyed, and he's not the only one with that hope. When they return to the base and find Brody still lying on the med bed with symbols glowing on his chest, it's Preston who asks, "What's going on? The monster's gone."

Mick frowns, and shows them the results of the scans he and Redbot ran. From what they've been able to figure out from Brody's symptoms and the glowing symbols, the monster's attack cast a spell on Brody that put him into a deep sleep. Worse, the spell has a time limit. The symbols multiply over time, and in a few hours, they will cover Brody's whole body causing him to sleep forever.

"So how do we save him?" Levi asks, his heart in his throat.

The corner of Mick's mouth curves upwards. "That's the good news. The spell is linked to the magic of marks. I don't think it was a coincidence that that monster was carrying around a copy of Sleeping Beauty. I'm very sure the spell can be undone by the simple magic found in the kiss of a soulmate."

The feeling of relief in the room is palatable. After all, Aiden is with them. No matter how Levi feels about him, he shares Brody's mark and can save him. 

Levi turns to Aiden and Aiden... is not where he was a moment ago. Levi turns in a circle, looking for him, but Aiden is gone.

"Where's Aiden?" he asks. They all start searching for him, and Levi's furious even before Mick points out that their zord stars -- including the ones they just brought back to the base after the fight -- are missing. 

Levi's rushing out the secret door to their base and running through the school halls before anyone has a chance to say anything more. The halls are dark this late in the evening, but somehow Levi _knows_ where Aiden is, and he soon spots a figure in the shadows up ahead. Sure enough, it's Aiden and he's talking on a communication device that looks an awful lot like the ones Galvanax's monsters use.

Levi's hands curl into fists, and before he knows it, he's throwing the first punch. To his surprise, Aiden doesn't go down. He doesn't even drop the communication device. He just shuts the device off and pockets it. "Oh, it's you," he says calmly.

Levi recoils, his fist throbbing with a sharp pain like he's just punched a wall, but that does little to quell the rage inside him. 

"How dare you!" he yells. "Was this all part of your plan to get the power stars? Brody is your brother! Your soulmate! And you just--"

Levi's next words are cut off when Aiden strikes him in the chest so fast that Levi doesn't have a chance to block.

"He's nothing to me," Aiden says, his voice still eerily calm, and Levi steps back and raises his fists, shifting his body into a fighting stance.

"He's your brother!" Levi yells again and as Aiden comes at him, he blocks Aiden's kick and lands a strike of his own.

Striking Aiden is like hitting something hard and dense and Levi has to land three more hits before he figures out why. On the third hit, Levi's boot scrapes along Aiden's arm. It breaks Aiden's skin, but his skin peels back too easily and reveals a metal structure underneath.

"What are you?" Levi asks, out of breath and even more alarmed than he was before. 

Aiden straightens his back and his face twists into a smile. "I'm you," he says, as if that makes any sense, and raises his arm, palm facing forward towards Levi. An ominous ball of white light appears in the center of his palm and starts to grow in size. "But there can only be one of us."

Levi's power star is in his hand in an instant, and he morphs just as Aiden launches an energy blast in his direction. Even morphed, the blast knocks his backwards into a bank of lockers hard enough that the wind is knocked out of him.

When he gets to his knees, Sarah's suddenly there with him, and she's morphed too. Preston appears from around the corner a moment later, and both of them turn their blasters on Aiden.

"He's not the real Aiden," Sarah explains. "Mick and I tracked him. He's some kind of robot, and his power signature matches Odius."

The fake Aiden laughs and Levi's fury is the only thing keeping him from thinking too hard about what it means for Brody if this isn't really his brother. He raises his own blaster and points it at the fake Aiden. "On three," he says. "One. Two."

The fake Aiden doesn't seem to care. "It's too late. Your red ranger is doomed." 

"Three," Levi says and fires.

He's expecting the fake Aiden to explode, but what he isn't expecting is the mass of bright golden light that flies out of the explosion directly towards him. Whatever it is, it slams into the side of his head and the pain is so sudden and so sharp that he screams. He raises his hands to his temples, but the pain only gets worse. 

Before the pain overtakes him, he's vaguely aware of his morph disengaging, and that he's falling towards the ground.

*

Levi can't focus on anything but the jumble of images, feelings and memories that are tearing through his mind.

In one of the memories, he's a young kid and there's another boy with him who's familiar and--

\--he's pulling the gold power star out of the Nexus Prism and--

\--his father is entrusting him with the ninja steel and telling him to hide and--

\--he's showing that same boy the proper way to hold a practice sword and--

\--his father is playing the guitar in the living room and--

\--he's curled up, hidden behind crates in a train car, trying to stay silent and fighting back tears and--

\--his mother is reading him and that boy a bedtime story and--

\--he's being asked his name by a social worker and--

\--he's burying the ninja steel in the barn and--

\--he's watching his father die and--

\--he's helpless as that boy get scooped up by a monster and--

\--he has a mark on his shoulder he shares with his brother and--

\--he's struggling as Odius lowers a helmet over his head and--

\--his mother is smiling and telling him he's going to be a good brother and--

\--the boy being taken away by a monster _is his brother_ and he's shouting and--

\--"Aiden!"

*

"Brody!" 

Levi wakes with a start. He doesn't care that he's panting, that his head's pounding, and that his body aches. He pulls himself up to a sitting position. 

Mick and Hayley are immediately at his side to steady him and he realizes he's on a second med bed in their base that's been set up next to Brody's.

"Careful," Mick says, but Levi is already throwing his legs over the side of the bed and getting to his feet.

"When the fake Aiden exploded, you were attacked by some kind of energy blast," Sarah explains from where she's sitting at a computer terminal. "You should stay lying down until we figure out what happened."

Levi has no interest in lying down. Not when Brody is in trouble. He stumbles over to Brody's bed and catches his balance by bracing his hands on the edge of it.

Brody is still, his breathing steady. Levi has no idea how long he was out, but the symbols have had time to multiply, with new layers of concentric circles and lighting bolts radiating outwards from the original attack point. They not only cover Brody's chest but also his entire torso, his arms, his thighs, and his neck.

"Brody," Levi says and warring with his worry and fear is an immense sense of wonder. Lying here before him is his long-lost brother -- one he didn't even know he had already been reunited with. 

Levi can't help it. He sobs and feels tears well up in his eyes.

"Levi?" Hayley asks from next to him, her concern audible. She puts a hand on his left shoulder.

He looks up at her, and despite everything that's happening and despite everything he's feeling, he smiles. He puts his hand over hers and gently slides her hand down his arm and away from him.

"It's okay," he tells her. "It's going to be okay." He hooks his fingers under the hem of his t-shirt's sleeve and hikes it up for her and the others to see.

There on his skin is a black mark in the shape of a messy heart. 

Odius was able to take it from him along with his memories and give it to a machine. He hates that she could -- that she could violate even this sacred magic -- but what's important is that his mark and his memories are his again now. They're such an important part of him that he doesn't know how he survived without them.

"Levi, is that--?" Preston starts to ask, but he stutters before finishing his question, like he, too, is in shock.

"Odius took my memories and my mark and put them into that fake Aiden," he explains, sounding calmer than he feels. "When we destroyed him, I got them back."

"What are you saying?" Hayley asks.

Levi turns back to Brody. His brother who he never gave up on. His brother who he's always loved with his whole heart.

His brother who he failed to protect from Galvanax, from the monster who put this spell on him, and from the fake Aiden...

His brother who he has the power to save here and now.

He brushes the hair from Brody's forehead and bends down to press a gentle kiss against his skin.

For a moment, nothing happens, but then many things happen in quick succession. The symbols on Brody's skin suddenly stop glowing. A moment later, they vanishes completely, like they were never there at all. The second they disappear, Brody begins to stir.

Levi knew Brody would wake up, but the relief he feels almost brings him to his knees. He can't stop thinking, over and over again like his mind is stuck on a loop, that Brody is his brother and that he's going to be okay. 

He hears more than one person gasp and hears the others talking but he's not paying attention to anyone but Brody. He watches, rapt, as Brody groans and opens his eyes. 

Brody blinks up at Levi and his brows furrow. "Levi?" he asks. He pushes himself up onto his elbows, taking stock of the fact that he's on a med bed in their base. "What happened?"

Levi stares at him, eyes wide, and he knows he's crying again.

Because it took over ten years and more heartache than either of them deserved, but he... he finally has his brother back!

He bends down and pulls Brody into a hug. Brody is stiff with surprise and confusion, but he loops an arm around Levi's back and returns the hug.

"Levi?" Brody asks again.

Levi will happily answer every single one of Brody's questions later. There's so much he wants to tell him and he can't wait to spent time with Brody again, this time with the knowledge of who they really are to each other. There's nothing he wants more than to be the big brother he's been robbed of being for so long. 

But for now, the awe and joy he feels is overwhelming, so he holds Brody close and weeps into his shoulder.


End file.
